


But What did I Want?

by foolishnotions



Category: Babylon 5, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: AU, Crossover, Gen, Letters, Rampant Speculation, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolishnotions/pseuds/foolishnotions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Atlantis on the brink of destruction, what could it possibly matter what Elizabeth Weir wants?  And why is this strange man asking at all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	But What did I Want?

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written as a result of a prompt I saw for a fiction challenge some time ago. The prompt called for speculation as to what might have happened if something other than reinforcements had arrived through the stargate during The Siege. I chose to write something else for the challenge and never finished it because this kept getting in the way. It's my hope that it's out of my system now.

What did I want, after all?

Mostly, I wanted him to go away, to take his smile and his impertinent questions somewhere else so I could be doomed to die horribly in peace. I wanted that dramatic, dismissive solitude which comes with being a fallen leader. I wanted to sulk in my tent now that I had run out of ways to save my city. 

He wouldn’t let me do that. He stood in my office and asked again. So, what did I want? 

I wanted it over. I wanted to walk out of my office and find the Wraith gone and the city protected. I wanted to stop looking at screens only to find blinking lights signally hive ships coming closer; little beacons of destruction to remind me of what I still had to figure out.

But what did I want?

I wanted Atlantis; not the shell of something abandoned by time. I wanted her restored to what she had been, alive and bustling. I wanted to stand at the gate and know that we were home, that we could come and go from here in safety to a billion other worlds, putting Pegasus together a little at a time and watching the puzzle turn into a vast landscape that was safe to walk again. 

But what did I want? 

I wanted to stop waiting for Rodney to figure out one of the city’s mysteries too late and to stop having to pat his head and marvel at his brilliance because he had managed it at all. I wanted to know it all and soar between the stars on wings that obeyed my every whim, just as they had for us so long ago, free to explore wherever I wished. 

I wanted to stop being the infant child race, trapped in some great burn, barely crawling out of our ignorance, but still kept in our playpen by our older siblings. 

Mostly though, I wanted him to go away. He did, too, for a while. That suited me fine; he’d been driving me crazy. I got the sense that he was good at that.

He was the sort of guy mothers warn you about; the one she pointed at through the hairdresser window and said, “that one, honey. He’s trouble.” He was the kind you spend your life watching out for, and staying fairly vigilant, confident that you won’t fall for it. 

Until you meet him, and you always do. When you do meet him, his smile is just so… and his hair is just so… oh, and he dresses… 

Before you know it, you’re the proud owner of a new, previously owned classic sub-compact vehicle or an oceanfront property in Kansas. 

There he was though, in front of me, and I was ready to make a deal. 

What did it matter anyway, I remember thinking as he thanked me and walked away. I mean, what could one very strange man who walked through the gate for no clear reason ever do with my desires? I let him go to wander the city for whatever time we had left before the end. Sheppard’s objections didn’t mean much to me anymore and Rodney didn’t care so long as he stayed out from underfoot, and even that could be made better with a sandwich, so I let him be. The wraith were days, maybe hours away, we were doomed anyway.

But they didn’t come. They didn’t come in hours, in days, or even a week. John started to wonder what I had done and Rodney? I suppose he was too busty being clever to notice. It didn’t really matter to me; I had time. I could think it over later. When I asked him about it, he just smiled and said something about friends I didn’t know I had.

Then the ZPM came and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. It was depleted, but it was something. The city could wake and its secrets were ours. Away we went through the gate again, and oh what we found! For a while, we didn’t even notice the troubles that we no longer encountered, and why would we? It was easy to ignore the questions so long as the Wraith were leaving us alone and we were making discovery after discovery. I stopped asking my new friend about his associates— he was just evading my questions anyway— and accepted them as allies even if the others were less trusting. By then, I had tired of Rodney’s constant questions to the point where in secret, I breathed a sigh of relief the day he didn’t come back from his mission. His replacement was used to not wanting to know more than he needed.

I never knew when the Athosians left, or why. I suppose I never wanted to. They took Sheppard with them. I always supposed he got them out without my noticing. John left a note but I didn’t read it. I still have it somewhere. Maybe one day when I can live with myself again, I’ll take it out to remind myself of who I am at the heart of things, in case I ever start to forget. 

I never saw my friend’s associates-- not directly-- though they came to us. I gave them the continent where the Athosians had been; they weren’t using it anymore. My friend told me what to do and I did it, to make the place ready for them. I watched for them to come, desperate to look at the face of my saviours. 

I did see their ships. I should never have looked, but how could I not watch my allies’ triumphant arrival? I watched their ships sail overhead: one, two, three, for a while I couldn’t even see the sky for all the great, black spiders sailing in from nowhere. I went back inside and tried to forget. 

I tried to forget it all. When I couldn’t, I renewed my objections to my new friend, whose rhetoric had finally worn thin with me. I didn’t care that I was fast approaching godhood, but he urged me on just the same. I said no, and for the first time, he frightened me.

I wonder if I could have ever stopped our forward march, relentless, if I hadn’t seen those silhouettes, if my friend had never been so terrifying. I wonder, sometimes, if I would ever have had a reason to call it to an end. I suppose I would never have seen what I saw next. 

I had never heard a wraith scream before; not in terror, not fleeing for its life as I approached it. It chilled me, terrified me, but not so much as what I saw next. I was on M7G-677. The structures stood. I looked down at my instrument and saw blinking lights. I waited, breathless, for a moment, hoping to be greeted, but there was nothing. The wind rustled in the structures as I walked forward, horrified. 

There had been a crash, and the twitching dance of a hive ship wreck. I walked the whole thing, staring. The Wraith had come here and everyone had fallen; the children, the Wraith, everyone. I couldn’t even describe the scream I heard as I inspected the crash; it was as though it came from me, resonating inside my mind as though it had originated there, though it swept across the sky behind the black spider that circled above. 

So Mr. Morden, by the time you read this, it will be too late for you and your associates to change anything and I will already be gone. Our partnership is over, my friend. In thanks for saving all of our lives a year ago, I am giving you Atlantis. By now she is just a shell anyway. My people have gone home and I have gone away. Maybe one day I’ll find some kind of redemption. Maybe not. I can live with that too. I’m satisfied knowing that you won’t. 

By now, I hope you feel Atlantis rumbling as a storm rises. I’ve disabled the grounding stations and taken the ZPM. I hope your associates can swim. 

So long, Mr. Morden,

Elizabeth.


End file.
